The Sleepwalkers (12 page)

4.
Religion and Science Meet

If
Anaximander's
universe
reminds
one
of
a
Picasso
painting,
the
Pythagorean
world
resembles
a
cosmic
musical
box
playing
the
same
Bach
prelude
from
eternity
to
eternity.
It
is
not
surprising,
then,
that
the
religious
beliefs
of
the
Pythagorean
Brotherhood
are
closely
related
to
the
figure
of
Orpheus,
the
divine
fiddler,
whose
music
held
not
only
the
Prince
of
Darkness,
but
also
beasts,
trees
and
rivers
under
its
spell.

Orpheus
is
a
late
arrival
on
the
Greek
stage,
overcrowded
with
gods
and
demigods.
The
little
we
know
about
his
cult
is
clouded
in
conjecture
and
controversy;
but
we
know,
at
least
in
broad
outlines,
its
background.
At
an
unknown
date,
but
probably
not
much
before
the
sixth
century,
the
cult
of
Dionysus-Bacchus,
the
"raging"
goat-god
of
fertility
and
wine,
spread
from
barbaric
Thracia
into
Greece.
The
initial
success
of
Bacchism
was
probably
due
to
that
general
sense
of
frustration
which
Xenophanes
so
eloquently
expressed.
The
Olympian
Pantheon
had
come
to
resemble
an
assembly
of
wax-works,
whose
formalized
worship
could
no
more
satisfy
truly
religious
needs
than
the
pantheism
–
this
"polite
atheism"
as
it
has
been
called
–
of
the
Ionian
sages.
A
spiritual
void
tends
to
create
emotional
outbreaks;
the
Bacchae
of
Euripides,
frenzied
worshippers
of
the
horned
god,
appear
as
the
forerunners
of
the
mediaeval
tarantula
dancers,
the
bright
young
things
of
the
roaring
'twenties,
the
maenads
of
the
Hitler
youth.
The
outbreak
seems
to
have
been
sporadic
and
shortlived:
the
Greeks,
being
Greeks,
soon
realized
that
these
excesses
led
neither
to
mystic
union
with
God,
nor
back
to
nature,
but
merely
to
mass-hysteria:

Theban
women
leaving
Their
spinning
and
their
weaving
Stung
with
the
maddening
trance
Of
Dionysus!
...
Brute
with
bloody
jaws
agape
God-defying,
gross
and
grim,
Slander
of
the
human
shape.
⁶

The
authorities
seemed
to
have
acted
with
eminent
reasonableness:
they
promoted
Bacchus-Dionysus
to
the
official
Pantheon
with
a
rank
equal
to
Apollo's.
His
frenzy
was
tamed,
his
wine
watered
down,
his
worship
regulated,
and
used
as
a
harmless
safety-valve.

But
the
mystic
craving
must
have
persisted,
at
least
in
a
sensitivised
minority,
and
the
pendulum
now
began
to
swing
in
the
opposite
direction:
from
carnal
ecstasy
to
other-worldliness.
In
the
most
telling
variant
of
the
legend,
Orpheus
appears
as
a
victim
of
Bacchic
fury:
when,
having
finally
lost
his
wife,
he
decides
to
turn
his
back
on
sex,
the
women
of
Thrace
tear
him
to
pieces,
and
his
head
floats
down
the
Hebrus
–
still
singing.
It
sounds
like
a
cautionary
tale;
but
the
tearing
and
devouring
of
the
living
god,
and
his
subsequent
rebirth,
is
a
leitmotif
that
recurs
in
Orphism
on
a
different
level
of
meaning.
In
Orphic
mythology,
Dionysus
(or
his
Thracian
version,
Zagreus)
is
the
beautiful
son
of
Zeus
and
Persephone;
the
evil
Titans
tear
him
to
pieces
and
eat
him,
all
but
his
heart,
which
is
given
to
Zeus,
and
he
is
born
a
second
time.
The
Titans
are
slain
by
Zeus'
thunderbolt;
but
out
of
their
ashes
man
is
born.
By
devouring
the
god's
flesh,
the
Titans
have
acquired
a
spark
of
divinity
which
is
transmitted
to
man;
and
so
is
the
desperate
evil
that
resided
in
the
Titans.
But
it
is
in
the
power
of
man
to
redeem
this
original
sin,
to
purge
himself
of
the
evil
portion
of
his
heritage
by
leading
an
other-wordly
life
and
performing
certain
ascetic
rites.
In
this
manner
he
can
obtain
liberation
from
the
"wheel
of
rebirth"
–
his
imprisonment
in
successive
animal
and
even
vegetable
bodies,
which
are
like
carnal
tombs
to
his
immortal
soul
–
and
regain
his
lost
divine
status.

The
Orphic
cult
was
thus
in
almost
every
respect
a
reversal
of
the
Dionysian;
it
retained
the
name
of
the
god
and
some
features
of
his
legend,
but
all
with
a
changed
emphasis
and
different
meaning
(a
process
that
will
repeat
itself
at
other
turning
points
of
religious
history).
The
Bacchic
technique
of
obtaining
emotional
release
by
furiously
clutching
at
the
Now
and
Here,
is
replaced
by
renunciation
with
an
eye
on
after-life.
Physical
intoxication
is
superseded
by
mental
intoxication;
the
"juice
that
streams
from
the
vine-clusters
to
give
us
joy
and
oblivion"
now
serves
only
as
a
sacramental
symbol;
it
will
eventually
be
taken
over,
together
with
the
symbolic
swallowing
of
the
slain
god
and
other
basic
elements
of
Orphism,
by
Christianity.
"I
am
perishing
with
thirst,
give
me
to
drink
of
the
waters
of
memory",
says
a
verse
on
an
Orphic
gold
tablet,
alluding
to
the
divine
origin
of
the
soul:
the
aim
is
no
longer
oblivion
but
remembrance
of
a
knowledge
which
it
once
possessed.
Even
words
change
their
meaning:
"orgy"
no
longer
means
Bacchic
revelry,
but
religious
ecstasy
leading
to
liberation
from
the
wheel
of
rebirth.
⁷
A
similar
development
is
the
transformation
of
the
carnal
union
between
the
King
and
the
Shulamite
into
the
mystic
union
of
Christ
and
his
Church;
and,
in
more
recent
times,
the
shift
of
meaning
in
words
like
"rapture"
and
"ravishment".